AFS Leadership
Current Officers and Committee Chairs
President
Elaine Lawless (University of Missouri, Columbia)
Past President
Bill Ivey (Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee)
Executive Board
Terms ending after 2008
Diane Goldstein (Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's)
Dan Sheehy (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, Washington, DC)
Kay Turner (Brooklyn Arts Council, Brooklyn, New York)
Terms ending after 2009
Lucy Long (Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio)
Olga Nájera-Ramírez (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Guha Shankar (Library of Congress, Washington, DC)
Patricia A. Turner (University of California, Davis)
Terms ending after 2010
Timothy H. Evans (Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green)
Carl Lindahl (University of Houston)
Marsha MacDowell (Michigan State University Museum, East Lansing)
Executive Director
Timothy Lloyd
Associate Director
Maria Teresa Agozzino
Committee on International Issues
Timothy Tangherlini (University of California, Los Angeles), Chair
Cultural Diversity Task Force
Marilyn White (Kean University, Union, New Jersey), Chair
Membership Committee
Margaret R. Yocom (George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia), Chair
Nominating Committee
Mario Montaño (Colorado College, Colorado Springs), Chair
Publications Committee
Judy McCulloh (University of Illinois Press, Champaign), Chair
American Council of Learned Societies Delegate
Lee Haring (Brooklyn College, emeritus)
World Intellectual Property Organization Delegate
Sandy Rikoon (University of Missouri, Columbia)
AFS Archivist
Randy Williams (Utah State University, Logan)
Elaine Lawless (AFS President, 2008-2009)
Elaine Lawless, who received her PhD in folklore from Indiana University, is Professor of English at the University of Missouri. She is the author of five books, as well as many scholarly articles and is the co-producer (with Elizabeth Peterson)
of the documentary film on Pentecostalism, "Joy Unspeakable." At the University of Missouri she has received the Faculty
Alumni Award, the Kemper Award for Excellence in Teaching, a Gold Chalk Award (for graduate instruction) and a Purple Chalk Award
(for undergraduate instruction), and the Chancellor's Award for Research. In 2002, she was named a Curators' Professor by the
MU Board of Curators; in 2004, she was named MU Alumni Distinguished Professor. In 2003, she founded and is the producer of the
Troubling Violence Performance Project, with Professor Heather Carver (director) of the MU Theatre Department. In fall 2005, the university also appointed Lawless
to serve as director of its Center for Arts and Humanities.
Bill Ivey (Past President; AFS President, 2006-2007)
Bill Ivey is the Director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University, an arts policy research center
with offices in Nashville, Tennessee, and Washington, DC. He also serves as Senior Consultant to Leadership Music, a music industry professional
development program, and chairs the board of the National Recording Preservation Foundation, a federally-chartered foundation affiliated with
the Library of Congress. He is currently board chairman of WPLN, Nashville Public Radio, and is completing a book about the public interest and
America's cultural system.
From May, 1998 through September, 2001, Ivey served as the seventh Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal cultural agency.
Following years of controversy and significant budget cuts, Ivey's leadership is credited with restoring Congressional confidence in the work
of the NEA. Ivey's Challenge America Initiative, launched in 1999, has to date garnered more than $19 million in new Congressional appropriations
for the Arts Endowment.
Prior to government service, Ivey was director of the Country Music Foundation in Nashville, Tennessee. He was twice elected board chairman of
the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Ivey holds degrees in folklore, history, and ethnomusicology, as well as honorary doctorates
from the University of Michigan, Michigan Technological University, Wayne State University, and Indiana University. He is a four-time Grammy
Award nominee (Best Album Notes category), and is the author of numerous articles on US cultural policy and folk and popular music.
His newest book Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights will be published by the University of California Press in 2008.
Recent Presidents of The American Folklore Society
Michael Owen Jones (AFS President, 2004-2005)
Jones holds degrees in history, art,
international relations, folklore studies, and American studies. A member of the UCLA faculty since 1968, he has taught
courses on folk medicine, art, food customs and symbolism, vernacular religion, narrative analysis, fieldwork,
folklore theories and methods, and tradition and the individual. For 12 years he directed a research center and
archives and then chaired a teaching program. He has organized conferences on cultural diversity in the classroom,
urban folklore, and organizational culture and symbolism.
Jones has served on the Board of Directors of the California
Council for the Humanities, the Los Angeles Folk and Traditional Arts Program, and the American Folklore Society.
He has undertaken major research projects on African American storefront churches in Los Angeles, Ukrainian icon
painters in Canada, craftsmen in southeastern Kentucky, and Latino herbal medicine in Los Angeles.
Among his publications are
Why Faith Healing?, People Studying People: The Human Element in Fieldwork, The Handmade Object and Its Maker,
The World of the Kalevala, Craftsman of the Cumberlands: Tradition and Creativity, Inside Organizations,
Exploring Folk Art, Putting Folklore to Use, Folkloristics: An Introduction, and Studying Organizational
Symbolism.
Jones has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Library of Medicine, and the
National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. He is a Folklore Fellow in the Finnish Academy of Science
and Letters and a Fellow of the American Folklore Society.
Jack Santino (AFS President, 2002-2003)
Jack Santino received the M.A. and the Ph.D. degrees in Folklore
and Folklife at the University of Pennsylvania. While still a
graduate student he began work at the Smithsonian Institution’s
folklife program, where he remained for nine years. There he was
a program coordinator for a variety of different presentations
at the annual Festival of American Folklife on the National Mall,
including Pullman porters and many different occupational groups.
He coordinated the "Folk Medicine: Herbalists, Curers, and Healers"
program for the National Museum of American History, and the Living
Celebration series held in the Renwick Gallery. In 1983 he joined
the faculty of the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green
State University in Ohio, where he is currently a professor of
folklore and popular culture.
He has worked on ethnographic films such as the multiple Emmy
Award-winning Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle: The Story
of the Black Pullman Porter. He has published scholarly
articles in all major folklore journals, as well as American
Anthropologist and Natural History magazine. He is
the author or editor of six books, including most recently Signs
of War and Peace: Social Conflict and the Public Use of Symbols
in Northern Ireland. From 1996 to 2000 he was the editor
of the Journal of American Folklore.
In 1992-1993, Santino conducted field research in Northern Ireland
with the aid of a Fullbright Research Fellowship and a British
Council Attachment to the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. In
2000 he was a guest professor at the Institute for North American
Studies at the University of Alcalá, Spain.
Santino’s research interests include the celebration of
American holidays and festivals; emergent rituals of death and
politics, such as spontaneous shrines and public death memorialization;
and the creative reinvention of ritual. He coordinates an annual
conference on Holidays, Ritual, Festival, Celebration, and Public
Display at Bowling Green State University.
Peggy A. Bulger (AFS President, 2001)
Peggy A. Bulger is director of the American Folklife Center at
the Library of Congress, the second person to hold that position
since the U.S. Congress created the Center in 1976. A native of
New York State, she holds a B.A. in fine arts from the State University
of New York at Albany, an M.A. in folk studies from Western Kentucky
University, and a Ph.D. in folklore and folklife from the University
of Pennsylvania. A folklorist, consultant, and producer, Bulger
has been documenting folklife and developing and managing folklife
programs for more than twenty-five years. She has been Florida
State Folk Arts Coordinator (1976-79), Florida Folklife Programs
Administrator (1979-89), and Program Coordinator, Director, and
Senior Officer for the Southern Arts Federation (1989-99).
Bulger is the author of South Florida Folklife, with Tina
Bucuvalas and Stetson Kennedy, (1994) and the editor of Musical
Roots of the South (1992). She is the producer of many videos,
including Music Masters & Rhythm Kings (1993), Every
Island Has Its Own Songs: The Tsimouris Family of Tarpon Springs
(1988), Fishing All My Days: Maritime Traditions of Florida’s
Shrimpers (1985); and a number of recordings, including Deep
South Musical Roots Tour (1992) and Drop On Down in Florida
(1981). She is a member of a number of professional organizations,
including the New York, Kentucky, and Florida folklore societies,
and she served as president of the American Folklore Society (2001).
Jo Radner (AFS President, 1999-2000)
Jo Radner received her Ph.D. in Celtic Languages and Literature
at Harvard University in 1971, and since then has taught Celtic
studies, folklore, American studies, literature, women’s
studies, and creative storytelling at American University in Washington,
DC.
Her research areas include oral narrative, feminist folklore,
early Irish and Welsh literature and historiography, modern Irish
and Scottish folklore, the contemporary storytelling movement,
and the rural culture and history of nineteenth-century northern
New England–all interconnected by a fascination with narrative
and performance that also leads her to create and perform her
own original stories. She is past president of the Celtic Studies
Association of North America and the Washington Storytellers Theatre,
a co-founder of the Middle Atlantic Folklife Association, and
currently a member of the Board of Directors of the National Storytelling
Network. Her publications include Feminist Messages: Coding
in Women’s Folk Culture (University of Illinois Press,
1993).
Strongly attached to her family’s home region of western
Maine and eager to develop new careers in folklore and applied
storytelling, Jo is moving out of academic life to live and work
in New England as an independent folklorist, storyteller, writer
and researcher. Aided by a Mellon Fellowship at the American Antiquarian
Society, she is finishing a book on the creation and performance
of handwritten literary "newspapers" in nineteenth-century
New England. She also conducts fieldwork in Maine, and continues
to develop and perform stories relating to New England life and
history (including current research on Rogers’ Rangers, the
eighteenth-century Indian fighters, and on the Western Abenaki).
AFS Executive Director
Timothy Lloyd has served as the executive director of the American Folklore Society since 2001. His office
is located at The Ohio State University in Columbus, where he also serves as Adjunct Associate Professor of
English.
Before coming to the Society, Lloyd served as executive director
of Cityfolk, a nationally recognized folk arts organization located
in Dayton, Ohio. Earlier still, he was assistant director of the
American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, before which
he served for 14 years as director of folk arts programs for the
Ohio Arts Council. He began his career as a staff folklorist for
the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife and Cultural
Heritage.
Lloyd received his PhD in American studies
from The George Washington University. He has taught folklore at Colorado College, The George Washington
University, The Ohio State University, and Utah State University. His research interests include American
foodways, occupational culture, and the history of public practice in the field of folklore. He has published articles and reviews in the major American
folklore journals, and co-authored Lake Erie Fishermen: Work, Identity and Tradition (University of
Illinois Press), named the best maritime history book of 1990 by the North American Society for Oceanic
History.
Lloyd has served as a board and committee member or consultant for many organizations,
including the French-American Foundation, the Fund for Folk Culture, the Michigan Council on the Arts and Cultural Affairs, the Michigan
State University Museum, the Ministry of Culture and Communication of the Republic of France, the National Council for the Traditional Arts, the National Endowments for the
Arts and Humanities, the National Recordings Preservation Board, the Ohio Arts Council, the Ohio Humanities Council, the Ohio State
University Libraries, and the Smithsonian Institution. He represents the AFS within the American Council
of Learned Societies and the National Humanities Alliance.
AFS Associate Director
Maria Teresa Agozzino is the associate director of the American Folklore Society. She also serves as Adjunct Assistant Professor of English
at The Ohio State University.
She received her BA in Celtic Studies and Anthropology (1999), MA in Folklore (2001), and PhD in Folklore and Celtic Studies (2006) from the University of California, Berkeley, where she worked closely with the late Alan Dundes and was head of the UC Berkeley Folklore Archives for several years.
Agozzino has taught folklore courses at both UC Berkeley and California State University East Bay, organized many conferences, and served on several directorial and editorial boards, including those for the California Folklore Society, the Celtic Studies Association of North America, and the Ritual Year Working Group of the Société internationale d’ethnologie et de folklore. She has traveled widely and conducted fieldwork in several European countries, in North and South America, and most notably among the Welsh in Patagonia, Argentina. Her research interests and publications center on folk belief; calendrical customs; Wales, the Welsh, and the Welsh Diaspora; and Arthuriana.
An AFS member since 2000, Agozzino joined the AFS staff in June 2007, before which she worked as the administrative manager of the non-profit community arts organization The Berkeley Society for the Preservation of Traditional Music.
